EDUCATOR

Teaching, designing lesson plans, and working with curriculum has a lot in common with making science media. There’s no better way to learn a thing than by telling a story about it. And being able to tell a good story has really come in handy when creating educational frameworks for STEM content.

I made a visualizing science workshop for students and scientists at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and guest lectured. At New York University, I guest lectured about how to make science videos for a Science, Health & Environmental Reporting program class. As a part of a National Science Foundation grant, I developed a STEM science communication course at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which will provide graduate students with the tools to turn research into visual media (course starts fall 2024).

Also, I was a National Park ranger at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge along the coast in Queens, New York. I developed lesson plans, produced educational materials, and led classes about urban ecology and climate change for NYC school kids. I worked closely with park non-profit partners like the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, too.

For National Geographic Student Expeditions, I taught high schoolers nature photography in Yellowstone National Park (which is where I took that photo of the bison). And I worked with grade school kids at a housing development in East New York, Brooklyn to help them photograph scenes of their neighborhood.

Here’s an example of media that I made as supplementary content for a middle school education program on phenology.